A little help, please? Heat season will end soon unless Wade gets more help from teammates

Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade (3) goes up for two as Toronto Raptors center Jonas Valanciunas (17) defends in the second quarter during Game 3 of the Heat-Raptors NBA Playoff series at AmericanAirlines Arena on Saturday, May 7, 2016.
AL DIAZ
adiaz@miamiherald.com

It’s still on Dwyane Wade, after all this time. It’s almost unfair. He is 34 now. He cannot rest. His burden is still too great.

We saw it again here Saturday night.

He did just about everything for the Miami Heat.

It was not enough.

Unlimited Digital Access: Only $0.99 For Your First Month

It sounded like the same phrase was on a continuous loop in that magical third quarter, or maybe a recording that kept skipping back to the same thing. Over and over, rising above the thunderous cheering, the arena announcer just kept repeating himself:

“DWYANE WAAAAAAAADE!”

Wade's season-high 38 points were not enough for the Heat on Saturday.

By

This man has been Miami’s since 2003 and over these many years he has become a three-time NBA champion who – yes – has supplanted the Dolphins’ Dan Marino as simply the most accomplished, most beloved athlete in South Florida sports history.

But even by the standards of that echelon and those expectations, what Wade did here in the thrill of that third period was a wonder, the kind of memory a fan keeps in mind like a family heirloom.

He would score 18 of his game-high 38 points in an extended flurry that erased a double-digit Toronto lead, lifted the bayside arena back to life, gave Miami the lead and maybe saved a season – or so it seemed.

Alas, it would fritter away to a 95-91 Heat home loss that gives Toronto a 2-1 series lead entering Game 4 right back here Monday night. Now the pressure really shifts to Miami, which must win the next game or put itself in a position of needing to win three in a row, two of them in Toronto.

And now the burden on Wade to lift and carry a team (and a city) only grows, with the right knee injury suffered Saturday by center Hassan Whiteside, who left early in the second quarter and did not return.

Toronto also lost it 7-foot center, Jonas Valanciunas, to an ankle injury, but there were early indications Whiteside’s injury could be worse. Results of an MRI will be revealed Sunday, but the Mother’s Day news may not be good for Heat fans.

“What we have is a very competitive series right now,” understated Miami coach Erik Spoelstra.

Ya think!? This entire Heat playoff run, its first of the post-LeBron James era, has been a wonderful thing for stress junkies. Nothing calm about it.

The Heat survived Charlotte in a first round stretched to the maximum seven games, somehow advancing despite three consecutive losses.

Now the Heat is down 2-1 in a series already with two overtimes and suddenly complicated by two big injuries to two big men.

And all the while the prospect of meeting LeBron in an Eastern Conference finals still looms as a giant carrot before Miami, albeit one that distanced itself from the Heat Saturday night.

The Heat have the perfect excuses lined up now – no Bosh, no Whiteside – if excuses are what they are looking for.

The Golden State Warriors are playing (and still winning) without the best player in the NBA as Stephen Curry nurses his sprained knee.

So nobody outside of Miami will have much sympathy now for the Heat, whose franchise well on outside sympathy probably ran dry for good when the club brought in LeBron and started counting all those championships to come.

It is likelier that the rest of the country is laughing, not feeling sorry, for a Heat team already missing its best player, Chris Bosh, to his blood clots issue and now missing its dominant big man in Whiteside.

“Toronto don’t care. No one cares,” as Wade put it. “It’s part of the game. We still have a series to play. No matter what happens, guys got to step up.”

With Bosh already out and Whiteside suddenly gone, the Heat rotated in three other players trying to neutralize Toronto’s Valanciunas – who’d been killing the Heat even with Whiteside facing him prior to him going out, too.

Read Next

The Dolphins have gone 45 seasons since last winning a Super Bowl. But! Astonishingly, 23 other franchises have even longer title droughts. We accentuate the positive by emphasizing the negative in our new Sports Fan Misery Index.